1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to real-time communication. More specifically, the present invention relates to a tracking application for real-time communication data from a plurality of diverse real-time communication providers.
2. Background and Related Art
Real-time communication or instant messaging (“IM”) is becoming increasingly popular for commercial, leisure, and even military applications. By its nature, however, particularly in the commercial and leisure settings, real-time communication is generally one of several tasks being performed simultaneously. Accordingly, the relative importance of real-time communication with respect to other tasks is subject to change over time. One shortcoming of current real-time communication software is the inability to adjust to these changing priorities.
Real-time communication software generally shows some information about various users, such as whether a user is online and available for a real-time conversation, and allows a user to initiate real-time communication with others or accept notifications to join conversations initiated by others. Apart from the real-time communication window, there is no way to keep track of a user's real-time contacts so that the user is aware of the contacts' status and presence or to begin a real-time conversation. At times this creates difficulties for a user because like other windows, the real-time communication window and its contact information may be covered by other applications.
Another problem is that real-time communication information tends to be limited to individual service providers. For example, contact information and a contact's status or presence is shown only within a particular service provider's real-time communication window. As a result, if a user communicates with several contacts having different service providers, separate real-time communication windows must be open for each distinct service provider. Of course, needing several real-time communication windows to keep track of contacts, simply multiplies the difficulties identified above.
Currently, real-time communication windows also tend to be limited to providing only real-time communication information. Information about other forms of communication has been considered extraneous. For example, real-time communication windows have failed to integrate information about the number of unread e-mails a contact has sent. However, e-mail may be a fallback form of communicating with contacts when real-time communication is unavailable. Therefore, e-mail information may help provide continuity in communication when contacts are not currently online. Accordingly, improved methods, systems, and computer program products for tracking real-time communication data are desired.